Asset search is becoming an increasingly important function in large enterprises and other arenas, as the aggregate collection of assets continues to grow considerably. Assets can be software or other useful computer-based tools that an enterprise or other entity may want to employ. Typically they are stored in data repositories or other suitable data storage. Given the continually growing collection of assets, challenges continue to be presented in efficiently and effectively searching for the assets.
Generally, conventional asset search techniques rely heavily on human introspection and interpretation in selecting a proper asset. Assets stored in repositories don't contain a functional-centric relationship model with peer assets (both life cycle relationship and variant relationship model). Not having a strict governance and filtering process leads to similar and redundant assets getting into a repository, leading to crowded search space. Asset consumers don't typically have a pre-download analysis available with respect to differentiating their selection over other related assets, nor do they normally have direct access to variants and life cycle related assets for search and selection, on selecting a parent or base asset.
Given a variability schema and model for an asset, a typical possible collection of asset variants for a successful asset will be in the order of 5-10, derived from a subset of combination of identified variation points for the base asset. The base asset tends to become outdated with respect to a consumption context, leading to fresh development (where the asset is fully withdrawn from the repository and replaced by a suitable new design and implementation as judged by the asset owners), while the variant(s) of the asset exist either in a local environment or as a different asset in the repository.
The lack of a formalized relationship model and search-centric differentiation for assets, which is a prominent problem for model-centric assets, have an adverse affect on reuse of asset or on the associated variants. The result can often be losses from the cost of asset ownership in repositories and additional development costs in regular project engagements.